The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Users of client devices, such as printers, scanners, multi-function peripherals (MFPs), interactive whiteboard (IWB) appliances, projectors, etc., often have questions about the operation of these devices. For example, users may have questions about particular features or the meaning of error codes. Some of these devices allow a user to use the control panel of the device to access a user manual or frequently asked questions (FAQ) document to obtain an answer to a question or to obtain information about a feature of the device. These devices may also allow a user to enter a query to access a knowledge base of information pertaining to a particular device.
One of the issues with these approaches is that the information provided to users is often static and not updated in response to user feedback. For example, for some client devices, user manuals and FAQs are often prepared prior to the product release and may rarely be updated, even when the information is available via the Internet. Similarly, answers to queries are often static and do not change over time. These issues also apply to information provided to users from customer support services. Customer support personnel are typically selected from a queue based upon availability and provide answers to questions from static information that is similar to the information found in user manuals and FAQs.